It was nice to see Samsung get lots of publicity after showing its Android-based Galaxy Tab tablet at the IFA 2010 trade show in Berlin. But the Tab was just the first of a string of new products as companies pile in to what they hope will become a viable new market, rather than a passing fad.
IDC has increased its forecast for sales of media consumption tablets for 2012-16, while predicting a decline in Android's market share. The new forecast also ignores tablets running Microsoft's Windows RT, though the research company says it plans to add these from the next quarter.
Warren Buffett - who is famously averse to technology stocks - is being reported as doing things he hasn't actually done. Currently these include buying $1bn of Apple shares and bidding for Yahoo.
If you work for Facebook, YouTube, HP or even IBM, your boss is more powerful than Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey or Queen Elizabeth II, according to Forbes magazine's annual list of the World's Most Powerful Women
Some of Taiwan's PC manufacturers have complained to the island's Ministry of Economic Affairs because they have not been invited to participate in the early development of the next version of Windows, known as Windows Next or (but not by Microsoft) Windows 8 for tablets. Two of the world's largest PC manufacturers by units -- Acer and Asus -- are based in Taiwan, along with other suppliers such as MSI and HCT, and most of the large contract manufacturers.
An Amazon tablet -- which is, admittedly, not known to exist -- could help fuel a nine-fold increase in the demand for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) in 2011, according to US-based market tracker iSuppli. With the Kindle generating an estimated (by Caris & Co) $5.
The 15th annual Webby Awards ceremony was held in New York on Monday night, with one of the highlights being the award of Person of the Year to IBM's Watson computer, an expert Jeopardy game player. The event is noted for acceptance speeches limited to five words, and the computer came up with a classic: "Person of the year.
Amazon has more than a million tablets on order, according to Taiwan's DigiTimes. If accurate, this would make the online bookstore a significant force in the media tablet business, second only to Apple.
Hewlett-Packard held an extravagant champagne party at the Mayfair Hotel in London on Wednesday night to unveil its new TouchPad tablet, launch date and prices. Suffice it to say that the TouchPad not only follows the almost 10-inch screen size established by the Apple iPad, it also follows its prices exactly: the 16GB Wi-Fi version costs £399 with the 32GB model at £479.
If your web site is doing something that might be legal in the UK, you could still be arrested and extradited to the US, if your site has a .com or other US-registered domain name.
